


Remedy In This Hour

by significantowl



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, Episode Tag, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-28
Updated: 2011-11-28
Packaged: 2017-10-26 15:30:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/284882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/significantowl/pseuds/significantowl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>4.08 coda.  Gwaine goes to the physician’s chambers when there’s healing to be done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remedy In This Hour

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for 4.07 and 4.08.

The hour is late, more suited to sleeping than to visiting, but Gwaine has never been overly concerned with the rules in such matters. Besides, it’s not even as if he has to knock; the door to the physician’s chambers stands ajar.

He slips into the room. There’s very little light, just the fire in the hearth and one candle on the table in front of Merlin, who is working with a mortar and pestle. Gwaine comes closer, and catches the sweet-sharp tang of herbs.

“Got a question fit for a physician,” Gwaine says, but even as he speaks, he can tell that the casualness in his voice is too obviously forced, and the words are all wrong.

“Gaius isn’t here.”

“And we both know that doesn’t matter,” Gwaine says, soft, unwilling to be daunted by the hard set of Merlin’s jaw. “Will you hear my case?”

He expects a protest; he expects activity, for Merlin to become a whirlwind, busy, busy, always too busy. But Merlin just bows his head forward, elbows on the table, hands gripping the back of his neck, and says, “Why would I stop you?”

Gwaine hesitates, but only for a moment. He goes to sit next to Merlin, astride the bench. “It’s about bruises,” he says. “Sore places. Must they hurt as they heal?”

“It’s their nature.” Merlin turns his head enough to shoot Gwaine a smile. It’s half-hidden by his arms, and maybe that’s on purpose, but Gwaine can still see its sharp edges. “There now. Glad I could be of help.”

“But what about remedies?” Gwaine asks. “Am I wrong, or can a warm touch offer relief?”

“Two days of cold, two nights of heat,” Merlin says, as if reciting. “That’s the rule for compresses.”

Gwaine stands. “Well then. Point me to your linen.”

Merlin takes him literally, gesturing wordlessly towards a basket near the herb-rack. Gwaine selects a particularly soft bit of fabric, and takes it over toward the hearth, where - as he’d expected in the physician’s rooms - a pot keeps hot, clean water at the ready. He dips one end of the linen into the water, then folds it to become a neat, damp square.

When Gwaine turns from the fire, he sees that Merlin has straightened, and his eyes are following Gwaine. He wishes he could read Merlin’s expression; he’d like to think that Merlin knows what Gwaine wants to do, that he understands that Gwaine is not here to take, but to give.

Sometimes Gwaine feels like the window glass fixed into the high walls of the castle, pinned in place by a life he never thought he wanted to live, and transparent, so transparent, when it comes to Merlin.

Strange how Merlin could shatter him with a careless blow, how exposed he feels, all the time, yet he can’t be certain if Merlin sees through him.

He approaches Merlin, the cloth warming his hands. “Easier on me if you turn round,” he says. And there, that’s the first sign of a true smile creeping over Merlin’s face. As if he’d been wondering this whole time, but unable to go so far as to believe.

Gwaine’s fingers tighten. It would be easy to blame the way he’d behaved while influenced by the girl - the creature - but it wouldn’t be honest. Of course that couldn’t have helped the trust between them, but Gwaine doesn’t even understand when it became such a delicate thing in the first place.

Merlin slips a leg over the bench, straddling it as Gwaine had done, and Gwaine slides into place behind him. He reaches for Merlin, and hesitates. “Going to need to raise your tunic," he says.

"Yeah," Merlin says, and is that a hint of a grin in his voice? "Yeah, I know."

There’s no kerchief around Merlin’s neck tonight. Gwaine drops the compress and reaches for Merlin's waist. He lifts the tunic carefully, trying to keep the fabric from scraping against Merlin's back, and helps Merlin work his arms through the sleeves, noting that the left seems to pain him more than the right. Merlin balls up the tunic in his hands, breathing unsteadily, while Gwaine looks at the damage that's been done.

It’s more than he’d expected. Leon had been flung some distance by the creature, and the bruising on his upper back still hampers his movements during training, no matter how hard Leon tries to fight it. In comparison, Merlin’s bruises are a deeper purple, bordering on black in some areas, and they spread from his shoulders down to his waist. Gwaine sucks in a breath, imagining Merlin being thrown again and again.

He holds the compress not to the worst place, but nearby, just under the sharp blade of Merlin's shoulder. He leans forward, seeking to give just the right pressure, gentle but effective; it's not as easy as it sounds, and he reaches around to splay a hand across Merlin's chest, for resistance.

Merlin makes a small choked sound, but then he relaxes, shoulders dropping. Gwaine holds the pressure for a long moment, then moves the compress to the left to begin again. There are scratches on Merlin’s back as well, long, shallow cuts that are just beginning to heal, and near his spine is an old, nasty scar.

"You're good at this,” Merlin says.

"Had my fair share of adventures," Gwaine says. "You know how it is. They tend to leave their marks." He pauses, looking not so much at the contusions marring Merlin's skin, but at the curve of his neck, the hang of his head. "None quite like this though."

"Your first mind-controlling snake-creature," Merlin says. "I could do with less of those."

"Yeah. Yeah, me too."

It hurts, now, to consider how he'd attacked people he cares for, but Gwaine refuses to do himself the luxury of brushing it off as an enchantment, to be thought about no longer. How much worse for Merlin, to be surrounded and turned on by men he'd lived and served and laughed with, who in the breath of a moment suddenly considered him the enemy.

Waking nightmares must always be the slowest to fade.

Gwaine thinks of the last time he sat with Merlin in these darkened chambers, and wonders if he is getting close to something. Wonders, if he tries, whether or not he will be allowed to understand.

"When Gaius was taken," he begins, carefully, "you didn’t seem to have considered that I might believe in him. That I believed in you." Because that’s what it comes down to. Gwaine believes in Merlin's judgment. Gwaine believes in Merlin's heart. "I didn’t know I’d given you reason to doubt me."

Gwaine can feel Merlin's intake of breath, his chest drawing up sharply under Gwaine's hand. Gwaine holds him there, and waits.

If Gwaine is window-glass, Merlin is shutters of strong, sturdy oak. Open by day to dizzying, sunlight views, but barred at night to shadows and terrain Gwaine cannot fathom.

Lamia had considered Merlin both enemy and threat. Gwaine was never privy to her thoughts, but her feelings - her _hatred_ \- had burned through Gwaine with every word Merlin spoke.

There’s a question in that, but Gwaine has something more important than an answer: the certain knowledge that it would take another foreign, consuming poison of the mind for Gwaine to ever feel that way about Merlin again.

"What you give me is time to hope," Merlin says, low. "You make me think - and then you're the last one to draw a sword on me, the last one to tell me my place, and all that time, all that hope just makes it hurt so much worse."

Merlin is shaking. Gwaine looks down at his hand spread against Merlin's back, and realises that he is as well.

"I've never raised a sword to you," Gwaine says, quiet as a whisper. “I know the wrong I did. I thank myself that I never did that.”

Merlin makes a wet, choked sound. "Sorry. Figurative sword. Sorry."

Gwaine tugs gently at Merlin, pulling him around so that they are face to face. “I will never be a perfect man,” he says, sliding his hands between Merlin’s palms. It’s a gesture Merlin understands, if the way his eyes jerk to meet Gwaine’s are any indication. Of course he does, he’s lived at court long enough to know the ways a man may swear himself to another. “But will you do me the honour of allowing me to try?”

Merlin nods, over and over again until he seems to find his voice. “I will. And I -” He clears his throat. “I know that hope is the sort of thing you can build a life on. I promise to - to stop forgetting it.”

“Get ready, Merlin,” Gwaine says. “You’re going to find out just how good I am at reminding you.”

Merlin lifts Gwaine’s hands, twining their fingers as he clasps Gwaine’s hands to his chest. “I’m ready,” he says, leaning into Gwaine until his forehead rests against Gwaine’s brow. “I’m ready,” he repeats, more breath now than sound, his lips tracing the words high on Gwaine’s cheek.

It’s another promise, offered and waiting. Gwaine savours it for a heartbeat before nudging his lips up to meet Merlin’s and make it whole.


End file.
